Case Article—Optimizing Transportation and Equity in a District Zoning Problem for ORville Public Schools

This case asks students to solve a multiobjective optimization decision problem applied to school district zoning. In the case, residential areas in a school district must be assigned to middle schools having capacity limits. The operational considerations on the decision are the weighted distances traveled between students’ residences and their assigned middle school campuses. The ethical considerations pertain to equity in education and are measured using the numbers of economically disadvantaged students assigned to each middle school. This problem, including its two objectives, is motivated by a real zoning problem faced by a school district. Publicly available data from the school district and its rezoning efforts are used to populate the case. To complete the case, students model and solve an optimization problem both with and without the ethical considerations included. In doing so, they observe how ethical considerations can change the outputs generated by the optimization model. Evidence is provided from student surveys to indicate how completion of the case impacts perceptions of the importance of and understanding of how to include ethical considerations in optimization modeling. Results indicate statistically significant increases in those perceptions.